Disclaimer:
Creating this topic I wanted you to consider if you want to pay incompetent devs making what seems to be a shitty game and resolving to shady practices when it turns out some people don't like their game, whether you'd purchase it for yourself or wished to gift it to someone else. Knowing that, here's the actual post:

Seems like Wild Games Studio didn't like the TotalBiscuit's video about their game Day One: Garry's Incident, criticizing the title... so they pulled it off from YouTube claiming copyright infringement. Seriously. Since we can't see the original video for the moment, someone uploaded it to DailyMotion here so you can see for yourself what pissed them off so much.

Which gets even sillier, because devs sent him review code in the first place, according to TB on Twitter.

Here's what the CEO of WGS wrote on the game's Steam forums in topic which was closed by devs like many others, throwing bans for people bringing on the topic (topic later was reopened and at least some of bans withdrawn but they were banning critic people there long before this event):

We protected our copyright because Total Biscuit has no right to make advertising revenues with our license.
Source: http://steamcommunity.com/app/242800/discussions/0/810938810809560203/#p3

So they're telling us what actually, that they didn't realise the guy they sent game to makes his living giving his opinions about the games? I mean... What? Now I see it to be even better than Mosaico's developer here on SteamGifts telling us that they didn't encourage people to vote on Greenlight for their shit by giving free Steam key of the program to anyone who commented on their greenlight page. I'm kinda surprised it's coming not from EA et consortes but some indie devs. In the other hand maybe as indie devs they're just more desperate but even that doesn't mean they have to be that dumb as it certainly isn't going to work in their favor for them in the long run.

Here's a couple of TB's early Twitter messages originally selected by user josephgee on Reddit as some additional reference material: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

And here's his later video response. Bear in mind, he didn't start the whole public deal about this but just responded to Reddit users who found out about the issue (which wasn't that hard as you can see publicly notice about video with copyright claims instead of the actual video but kudos for them anyway).

... while developers remain awesome, linking to 'fair' review on their Facebook written by someone who is affiliated with them as he's the mod on their games forum).

Ah, that leads to the Metacritic page where until the recent events negative opinions were mysteriously vanishing. However, positive opinions started appearing, often sharing exact the same wording and similar kind of broken Engrish to one of the devs. They even issued a statement earlier this month.

We all know us, gamers so the petition to remove the game from Steam was just a matter of time.

Another interesting review by OfficialNerdCubed.

Gaming media starting to follow up: Indie statik, Gamefront, Kotaku

Edit 2: As the more stuff keeps getting posted, kinda reworked the topic, hope it's more readable now.

11 years ago*

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The biggest problem is that Valve has no quality control. A lot of games have slipped through the cracks now, simply because Valve is failing in its duty to protect the users of its platform from these jerks.

11 years ago
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It's only gotten worse since Greenlight activated. Valve seem to be in the habit of putting pretty much anything, regardless of quality, into their store now. Sad.

Incidents like this are happening on a regular basis now.

11 years ago
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Im not sure they really care though , as long as they get a few dollars in the their pockets

11 years ago
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https://www.facebook.com/wildgamesstudio lol backup pic

"Official Statement regarding the YouTube video “WTF Is... : Day One: Garry's Incident ?” from TotalBiscuit

We sent TotalBiscuit a Steam key on September 26th, giving him permission to evaluate Day One: Garry’s Incident.

Monetizing wasn’t mentioned in our communications and it was an error on our part to not have clarified the issue.

It was for that particular fact that Wild Games Studio had asked the video’s removal.

After the video was made unavailable, we have taken seriously the reaction from the community concerning freedom of expression.

We strongly believe in the freedom of expression of people and medias and have removed our copyright claim.

Wild Games Studio didn’t intend on preventing anyone from using their right to freedom of expression.

For this reason, Wild Games Studio sincerely apologizes to TotalBiscuit and anyone who felt that their freedom of speech was denied."

11 years ago
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So, let me get this straight. They gave him a key for the game, hoping he would cover it on his YouTube channel. And then they start whining about him monetizing his own content. You know, like all highly-rated and popular YT channels are.

Yeah, this is just nuts, they don't have a leg to stand on.

11 years ago
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Drinking game: freedom of expression.

11 years ago
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dat dere nerd pressure

11 years ago
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Wow... the stupidity of their argument is just incredible.

TB said in his video that they posted links to their previous videos, which are all monetized. So their basically saying that they didn't bother to look at the information they were given and now regret it.

Not to mention that basically all gaming sites that does reviews is driven by ad revenue. Everything from GiantBomb to IGN, there's going to be ads next to their reviews. To expect YT channels with almost 1.3 million subscribers to do it for free is just ridiculous to begin with.

11 years ago
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"We sent a review copy to a prominent Youtube reviewer, and forgot to tell him we didn't actually want him to review the game in the normal manner.

Oops. Our bad"

What sort of morons do they take people for? This is contemptuous bullshit, and a feeble effort to pass off out-and-out ballbaggery as a simple case of accidental omission. Screw them and their disingenuous (and thoroughly contemptible) "official statement" with every kitchen utensil available, simultaneously >:-(

11 years ago
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do you have a link to a reupload of the video?

11 years ago
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11 years ago
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Just noticed this on their steam discussions page. God , how many mistakes are they gonna make .

"Posting privileges: Only players who own Day One: Garry's Incident are allowed to post in this forum."

11 years ago
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And their statement was about freedom of speech. Oh my GOD. How they can be so stupid?

11 years ago
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i think that moderator claymeow made a thread about it advising the devs to do it , its yet another stupid tactic gonna come back to haunt them

11 years ago
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Lip service to free speech. Keeping it classy, WGS...

11 years ago
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LOL, that's the first time I've seen that restriction for Steam discussions. Hopefully the last.

11 years ago
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...

11 years ago
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11 years ago
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Dear internet,

We deeply regret getting caught with our pants down, especially after opening our mail this morning and finding that nastly legal letter. Please accept this insultingly nonsensical explanation, whose logic would be effortlessly torn to ribbons by the majority of 3 year olds.

Yours grudgingly,

Wild Games Studio

-x-

11 years ago
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TB's video is once again available on Youtube.

11 years ago
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The damage has already been done.

11 years ago
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I wish the employees of this lousy developer good look finding new jobs.

11 years ago
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I got if for free so i don't care.

11 years ago
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.. How? Won it from a giveaway? That still means someone, somewhere paid this shit dev cash for their "game".

11 years ago
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Basically the very first thing I was taught in my communications class in college was that you never delete negative reviews/comments/etc.

11 years ago
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So... Steam wants us to buy Daikatana... and now this?

I think it is a bit early to be warning people not to take candy from strangers... but I guess that is the case.

11 years ago
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Can I demand a refund of the 25~ minutes I spent watching a video of such a horrible game?

I honestly, think that anyone who has bought this game should get a refund.

11 years ago
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Pathetic.

11 years ago
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Lol, all those people. / \

11 years ago
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if by "attacking his livelihood" he means the fact he isn't making money on that video anymore, then I'd like to point out his video on this matter has 2.3 million views, which is on average 10-20x more views than the average WTF Is... video, yeah, he's so upset that his video got pulled, so upset. (sarcasm) He says they are attacking his livelihood yet he'll probably make more off that video than he did the actual WTF Is... That's TB stepping on the soapbox for you

If that's not the case then ignore this post.

11 years ago
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Apparently you haven't watched that video, because he says all the money from that video will be donated to EFF.

11 years ago
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edit: pray tell, how do you donate money to charity if you didn't earn the money in the first place?

my point that he's the gaming community's biggest attention whore doesn't change whether he gives the money to charity, shred it to pieces, etc.

and no, I didn't watch it

11 years ago
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You do realize that three DMCA strikes against a YouTube channel and it's automatically closed, right? That most definitely affects his livelihood.

Also... saying that he could have made money on something but didn't hardly puts him in a bad light. Your argument seems more to be that you don't like the man, therefor everything he says must be wrong.

11 years ago
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I assumed when I read this, that without any clarification he was referring to the more direct and obvious aspect of "attacking his livelihood" which would be that he is no longer generating revenue on that video specifically. Maybe he meant what you said, but I thought it was safe to assume the more obvious reason. As far as I'm concerned though he was just playing the victim card like he always does to generate as much drama as he could, playing it up so that when he finally did stand up on his soapbox (which is inevitable with TB) he could maximize the amount of hits his video gets.

But yeah, I dislike the guy, but that doesn't mean everything he says is wrong. But he does play plenty of FACTUALLY wrong things, he also makes lots of assumptions (like how he stood on his soapbox for half an hour preaching to the masses about how day one DLC of Mass Effect 3 was so bad, even though he was misinformed about what that DLC actually contained, or the time he reviewed Dear Esther and complained how it wasn't a game and the developers were being misleading since they listed their game as "Adventure" showing his lack of understanding how the Steam platform works (devs have a preset list of genres they can choose, and they have to pick at least one (or at least impirical data would suggest that a game must have some genre chosen)), these are really the only two examples I can think of but hey I try not to watch TB videos).

11 years ago
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Because of course, assumption without fully knowing the facts is the perfect way to go, right? When you assume, you make an ass out of.. I think you know how this line ends.

He was referring to the whole "3 strikes and you're out" thing. If you'd have watched his video (which makes perfectly good and compelling points about unfair censorship through misuse / abuse of Youtube's DMCA procedure, and not just how this affects him), you'd have known this. Instead, you let personal bias fill in a large scala of gaps in your assessment of the situation, yet still felt you should weigh in with some irrelevant personal vitriol against the guy.. Not very clever Monukai. Not the Monukai I know from reading your other forum posts.. Son, I am disappoint.

11 years ago
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If it had occurred to me that it was possible he meant something else, I would have wrote my post as a conditional statement, ("if this is what he means, then this is what I think about it"), but I'll admit that it was outside the scope of my imagination, due admittedly to my lack of knowledge about the workings of YouTube (not that I would have known that knowledge (and lack thereof) would be relevant at the time I posted it). It wasn't the type of assumption where I knew it could be one of two things and I assumed it to be one of them, but rather the type of assumption where I thought there was only one possible thing he could be talking about...if that makes it more clear.

It doesn't help that TB himself was limited to Twitter's obscenely small character limit, the way it was worded made it sound like he was talking about a more direct (direct as in something affecting it now--in current time) attack on his livelihood.

11 years ago
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.. You yourself are now even admitting you don't know the workings of Youtube and their DMCA procedure, yet still made assumptions concerning TB's twitter post concerning, well, Youtube's way of paying him.. Not very clever.. Anyway, aside from it being a baseless assumption (due to ignorance of what he was commenting about), the form of the assumption is irrelevant - only its' scope. And in this case, you knew nothing of the situation at hand, yet are posting on a thread in which the OP describes the situation quite well, with links to everything you need to be fully informed.

And it is a direct attack on his livelihood. Youtube works on a three strikes system for their DMCA takedown procedure. 3 copyright claims, and your channel gets taken down hardcore. Poof, gone. Again - watch the video, think about what's being talked about, then comment.

11 years ago
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You aren't very giving in a discussion, I was trying to concede some points and explain why I was wrong but apparently I can't even be wrong the right way. My original post is now edited to better reflect my apparent ignorance.

11 years ago
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Forgive me if I come across as belligerent, but it's just that your assumptions were really unwarranted, and meant that your OP and opinion on the matter was invalid due to irrelevance.. You were commenting on stuff that wasn't there, looking at an assumed situation that wasn't so. That's all. I hope you've checked the video out by now - I don't see what you edited. It really is a creepy thing to start a gaming channel now on YT, due to all these false copyright claims being tossed around like Halloween candy (topical reference ftw :P). In my opinion, there should be just as harsh a punishment on false DMCA claims - make 2 or 3 false claims
(after investigation), and bam, your own channel(s) across Youtube as a company go down. But then of course they wouldn't want to do that due to partnerships with these companies, and ad revenue from their videos. Well, at least they could remove their ability to make any more claims using the short DMCA procedure on YT (which enables instant takedown) ever again, in such a case, forcing companies to work through a lawyer / court and have their DMCA notice / takedown request properly investigated and approved prior to serving them to YT. Thoughts?

11 years ago
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And similarly, him being an annoyingly egocentric self-convinced attention whore has nothing to do with the implications of this case, nor how good the points he makes in the video are. You should watch the video (even if you are regularly annoyed by him) purely for its' content and points raised, not for him.

11 years ago
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lol, I just realized, both phil fish and stephano is french canadian :P

11 years ago
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Lets all blame the French!

11 years ago
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Goddamn French!

11 years ago
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Blame Canada!

11 years ago
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fak u, I blame france for sucking at video games ;D

11 years ago
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Bad Rats still a better game than this shiz...

11 years ago
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there's always going to be people who love and hate a game

11 years ago
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The game is horrific!! How can someone love it?

11 years ago
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This has been a more entertaining experience than the game itself. Good job Wild Games Studio!

11 years ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 11 months ago.

11 years ago
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What did you do :D

11 years ago
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Exist.

11 years ago
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Wild Games Studio went full retard.

11 years ago
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Closed 11 years ago by Mindestens.